It is a well known and universally experienced problem in the dairy and veal industries that a percentage of calves cannot make an easy transition from feeding off of their mother's teat to drinking from a pail.
It is common practice in the veal and dairy industries to take the calf from the mother as soon as possible, generally just a few days after birth. The calf needs to feed on its mother's milk only long enough to ingest enough colostrum contained in its mother's milk to receive natural antibodies necessary to protect the calf from disease and other maladys. The primary reason to start calves on pail feeding is that the milk replacer that is used as feed is equally or more nutritious than the mother's milk and it is economically advantageous for the farmer to get his cows back into milk production as soon as possible rather than to use them only as a food source for their calves.
The problem of what to do with the calves that will not drink directly from a pail has been around for a long time and many solutions have been tried. A common method is for the farmer to let the calf suck on his thumb and while the calf is sucking, to draw the calf's head down into the bucket so that the calf begins to get some milk from the pail. The farmer then withdraws his hand hoping the calf will begin to drink from the pail without the surrogate teat. In many cases, this procedure must be repeated until the calf learns to drink the liquid from the pail. This is not a practical method in a commercial operation.
Many artificial teat devices are in use. One device is a special pail that has a nipple attached to the outside bottom of the pail. The pail is suspended level with the head of the calf and the calf drains the pail by sucking on the nipple.
Another device is a solid nipple that attaches with a suction cup to the inside bottom of a pail. The solid nipple projects upwardly towards the top of the pail and serves as an object for the calf to suck on. The calf sucks on the nipple but receives no liquid feed due to the solid construction of the nipple. As the calf becomes frustrated with the nipple he may abandon it and drink directly from the pail. This device can become detached easily from the bottom of the pail and there is a risk of the calf sucking the nipple into its throat and choking.
Another common method is a large, plastic bottle removably mounted in a frame that can be attached on the side of a calf stall or in front of a calf crate. The bottle has a gravity fed nipple on its open end, and is mounted with the nipple projecting downwardly. The calf sucks on the nipple and drains the contents of the bottle. This method has the limitation of only being able to provide a fixed volume of milk replacer. It is also necessary for air to replace the space in the bottle as the milk replacer is drained.
Another known device is a nipple which floats, but which does not afford a choice of sucking or drinking to the calf being weaned and which device, further, floats in an unstable manner and does not allow full evacuation of the milk in the pail.
With all of the attached nipple devices, calves are known to pull the nipples off, risking the calf sucking the nipple into its throat and choking. Gravity fed nipples often leak creating unsightly and unsanitary conditions. The components are difficult to clean.
Much larger, automatic feeding systems are sometimes employed. These systems can feed hundreds of calves at a time through a system of feeding tubes running from a central tank. These systems have many mechanical parts, present tremendous cleaning problems and do not allow the farmer to know which calves are drinking and which are not. It should be pointed out that a calf which does not consume its ration is often suffering from a physical problem.
It would thus be an improvement in the art to provide a floating calf feeder with an upwardly projecting nipple which is continuously filled with milk and which allows a calf to select between sucking the nipple or drinking milk alongside the nipple whereby the calf may be weaned from its mother in a cost effective manner and in a manner easy to monitor the feeding habits of the pertinent calf.